


The Maiden Fair

by the_blue_fairie



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Internalized Homophobia, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24573334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_blue_fairie/pseuds/the_blue_fairie
Summary: Cassandra loved fairy tales.
Relationships: Cassandra/Rapunzel (Disney: Tangled)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 72





	The Maiden Fair

Cassandra seemed not the sort for fairy tales – not the sort to be moved by words softened into sentimentality by much use across the ages. Perhaps she seemed the sort to respect them at their roots – respect the old mothers, wizened as the roots of trees, whispering of wolves over the crackling flames – but not the softness that German brothers bound – false to their names – and sold to secure their sense of pseudo-sagacity.

Yet, Cassandra loved fairy tales. Something in them made the silver stardrop in her eye catch the light, and in its shimmer was reflected back to her all the cozy nights of her childhood when her father would read to her, read to her and kiss her brow and tickle her forehead with his fuzzy mustache – and then would she dream and that same silver stardrop that stayed with her even now would run into a glistening river, its waters reflecting not merely memories of laughing play (she with a toy sword, her father playing some ogre for her to defeat) but the deepest desires that come from dreams.

In dreamland, she would decapitate a dragon in one blow, slide down its scaled head, spring from the tip of its mottled nostril to kiss the hand of the maiden held captive in its coils…

Dreams she understood in childhood, but dared not understand, as though some shame seeped into her, seeped not from any single source but society’s… systems…

Cogs too invisible for a tiny child to see, yet she saw them – even as she could not process them – and the shame entangled with her other shames, with the buried guilts and fears her mother scratched into her with every clawlike caress… shames she felt even as she repressed their roots…

Cassandra loved fairy tales even at their softest – but fairy tales, like so many things… seemed to have no love for her…

(That was her own pride speaking.)

(Many had love for her.)

She had a happily ever after – here, by Rapunzel’s side – if only she could accept it.

(Handmaiden. Lady-in-waiting.)

(That was a protector of a sort.)

(She had faced many marvels already in Rapunzel’s service. There was still a chance for glory here.)

Yet, it was not the happily ever after promised by sun’s rays woven into print on fabulous golden pages.

It was its moon-mirror.

A light that touched her purely from her bedroom window since childhood, a light as comforting as the sun, as beautiful if she could but appreciate its beauty, but not –

Rapunzel tackled her with a hug and together they rolled down the hillside, Eugene close behind, laughing and with some witticism ready for when they both rose.

Child-Cassandra repressed the maiden fair in her dreamscapes just as she repressed the memory of her mother, focused on the severed dragon head, focused on the glory…

Yet, she did not want the glory – at least, not as deeply as she wanted –

Rapunzel rose, laughing, took Eugene by the hand and wandered up the hill again to the shade of the tree…

_Love._

Cassandra found she longed to be the hero in a fairy story not because heroes stride forth to seek their fortunes – not because they manage with their wits and the magic sword a talking lion or elfin man bestows upon them – but because of the promise of a true love’s kiss, the softest and most sentimental of silken things, the promise of a woman’s lips against her own…

At the bottom of the hill, out of the shade of the tree where Rapunzel and Eugene sat idly now, sunlight – not moonlight – washed around Cassandra.

No moon-mirror here, this was the sun…

Yet… it was… _another_ sun… not the sun she longed to feel…

Cassandra shut her eyes and imagined Rapunzel’s arms wrapped around her not in friendly play but as Eugene’s were now, imagined the Sundrop’s warmth embracing her, the Sundrop’s radiance melding with her own stardrop hope, two stars shining…

A fairy tale had played out in Corona, complete with a princess in a tower, and Cassandra had the good fortune to play a part in the happily ever after.

The sun’s rays shone upon her, both from the sky above and from Rapunzel’s friendship.

How then could she be so ungrateful?


End file.
